Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers

​To the citharode who was always deserted by his listeners, he gave the greeting, "Hail, cock!" When the man asked, "Why?" Diogenes said, "Because by your singing you wake everyone up." When a youth was giving a recitation, he filled the fold of his cloak with lupines and sat munching them opposite him; and when the crowd stared at him, he said he wondered how it was that, having left that fellow, they were looking at him. When an intensely superstitious man said to him, "With a single blow I will shatter your head," he replied, "And I, by sneezing on your left, will make you tremble." When Hegesias asked him to lend him one of his treatises, he said, "You are a foolish man, Hegesias, who do not choose painted dried figs, but real ones; yet having overlooked the true training, you hasten after that which is written."

​In answer to the one who reproached him with his exile, he said, "Yet it was on this account, you wretched man, that I took up philosophy." And again, when someone said, "The Sinopeans condemned you to exile," he said, "And I condemned them to stay at home." Once, seeing an Olympic victor tending sheep, he said, "Quickly, my good sir, you have passed from the Olympic to the Nemean games (grazing grounds)." Being asked why athletes are insensible, he said, "Because they are built up with swine's flesh and beef." Once he was begging of a statue; and being asked why he did so, he said, "I am practicing failure." While begging of someone—for he was doing this at first because of his poverty—he said, "If you have given to another as well, give to me also; but if not, begin with me."

​Once, being asked by a tyrant what kind of bronze was better for a statue, he said, "That from which Harmodius and Aristogeiton were forged." Being asked how Dionysius treated his friends, he said, "Like sacks: hanging up those that are full, and throwing away those that are empty." When a newly married man wrote upon his house, "The son of Zeus, glorious victor Heracles, dwells here; let no evil enter," Diogenes added underneath, "An alliance after the war." He called the love of money the metropolis of all evils. Seeing a spendthrift eating olives in an inn, he said, "If you had breakfasted in this way, you would not be dining in this way."

​He said that good men are images of gods, and that love is the business of the idle. Being asked what was wretched in life, he said, "An old man in want." Being asked which beasts bite worst, he said, "Of wild beasts, the sycophant; of tame ones, the flatterer." Once, seeing two centaurs very badly painted, he said, "Which of these is Chiron (inferior)?" He said that speech meant to please was a honeyed halter. He called the belly the Charybdis of life. Once, hearing that Didymon the flute-player had been caught as an adulterer, he said, "He deserves to be hanged by his name (by the testicles)." Being asked why gold is pale yellow, he said, "Because it has many people plotting against it." Seeing a woman in a litter, he said, "The marten-trap does not suit the beast."

​Once, seeing a runaway slave sitting upon a well, he said, "Youth, look out lest you fall in." Seeing a clothes-thief in the bathhouse, he said, "Are you after a small bottle of oil, or another cloak?" Once, seeing women hanged from an olive tree, he said, "Would that all trees bore such fruit." Seeing a footpad, he said, "Why are you here, noble sir? Surely not to strip some of the dead corpses?" Being asked if he had a maidservant or a manservant, he said, "No." And when the other said, "If then you die, who will carry you out?" he said, "The one who wants the house."

​Seeing a handsome youth sleeping unguardedly, he nudged him and said, "Awake, 'lest someone fix a spear in your back while you sleep.'" To the man buying delicacies at great expense, he said, "'Short-lived indeed, my child, will you be, buying such things as these.'" When Plato was discoursing on Ideas and naming 'tablehood' and 'cuphood,' Diogenes said, "As for me, Plato, I see a table and a cup, but tablehood and cuphood I do not see at all." And Plato replied, "Reasonably so; for you possess eyes, by which a cup and a table are perceived; but intelligence, by which tablehood and cuphood are seen, you do not possess."